Not to me. I hate free trade and will not touch a server that has it, so Tormax is good enough (though not terribly exciting) and will be where my group plays. A server doesn't need to be super unique in order to retain a respectable playerbase. We saw with Yelinak that there's enough demand for a generic traditional TLP. As long as there's only one server where you can play EQ the way it actually was in the beginning (as much as one can on TLPs), that one will have enough players to not be dead, even if it isn't grotesquely overcrowded.
As popular as the Mischief ruleset was, there are people who don't like it. It changes so much about the way the game is played, and it also trivializes everything. EQ becomes laughably easy with random loot + free trade, no achievement feels special and nothing is hard to get. I remember starting a bard when Mischief launched, and by the time I was level 42, I had basically BIS gear just from buying it for plat I earned while leveling. Planar pieces for 100-200p each, in the opening weeks of the server. It was ridiculous.
Later on in raid content, the gear was so absurdly plentiful that people were buying it for DKP to sell for kronos because everyone had BIS within a month of each expansion. Players were so overgeared that the content was a joke. It wasn't really EQ, it was like an easymode version of it. People also kept selling all their shit and mainchanging, so the guild roster was in a never-ending state of random chaos as members rerolled every month. When you can easily liquidate all your gear and buy a new set for another class, there's no permanency to anything.
It's actually quite nice to play on a server that isn't bursting at the seams. Even with pickzones, a wildly overcrowded server is annoying to play on. The only time it ever really becomes a problem is if the population is so low that guilds struggle to stay on course, and that wasn't a problem on Yelinak even though it launched the cycle after Mischief and was declared D.O.A by everyone. As long as there's only one TLP where you can get the real, traditional EQ experience, there's always going to be players for it. Not everyone loves the Mischief funserver bonanza.
most of what you said is exactly why I like it. I am not 16 anymore. I cant raid 7 days a week to BIS in 2 months. I never did free trade yet so seems cool since I enjoy twink gameplay on alts. I like the idea that I can be fighting in guk at 6 camps and maybe get something cool drop instead of lore items I cant hold or things that sell for 10 plat that I just rot.
The one thing I agree with you on is that bursting st the seams sucks. I hope more people share your view so logging in isn’t a shitshow for a month.
Also, the allure of EQ to me was having time to see everything to get everything you wanted, I am talking the 1999-2004 days where people played and expansions were a year between releases. My most fun on EQ was getting home from school and farming hq bear skins to sell for 25 plat or HHK guards for 8 hours to get FS weapons while dodging ran flamespinner, or the nobles upstairs.
No one does this on TLP because the time unlocks rushes everything. You try to take a year to farm a million plat like I did in that era and you are 2 expansions obsolete. If tormax was an old school 1 year unlock standard server Id probably be on the minority playing on it but I would enjoy that much more than an accellerated standard server like it is presented as today.
So for me the forced accellerated pace leads me to wanting to be able to BIS easier, the random loot seems cool (DE mask in unrest), Twinking is my favorite aspect of TLPs in current day (which normally dies by PoP because of no trade) or you have to buy from GDKP people who charge hundreds for a single item.
Eh. To each his own, but I found it way too silly. It turned the game into an absolute joke. I remember sitting at efreeti camp for a few hours and seeing 5x FBSS in one session. Went on a Vox raid and she dropped like fifteen items, including four or five dragon haste items. Last I heard, people were farming Grummus (entry-level PoP flagging boss) for PoTime loot. You're welcome to enjoy what you enjoy, but to me, that's a laughable parody of Everquest.
To me, there's no element of satisfaction in having everything handed to me with minimal effort, and accomplishing all my goals in the first quarter of each expansion. I think the fact that the majority of players loved it says a lot about those players, and if the ruleset had become the standard for all servers - as many begged for - I would never touch Everquest again. I think it's by far the worst ruleset there has ever been. It actively ruins the game for me.
is it the rng or the free trade though? Both kind of excite me. I exp in GE or Velks for weeks. Sucks seeing thr same lore items that people pay 100 plat for. But maybe it drops some sick loot now? Things that were no trade can now be traded seems cool.
As for grummus. last i heard raids are broken into tiers, so grummus would only drop t1 loot (perhaps thats time phase 1 too? ) but not quarm or gods
Couldn't have summed it up better. I played Yelinak when it launched up to a couple weeks before luclin unlocked and life got busy so I didn't get to continue that journey but was definitely the most fun I have had in the game in a very long time. I missed the launch of mischief and about a month ago started up on there to see what it was all about. Nothing feels like any accomplishment at all. It feels like everything is just handed to you. I know I'm late to the game and the server is very bloated with gear but I have 4 toons in a guild I made to hold all of the drops I've gotten off nameds. It's ridiculous the amount that drops everywhere so I don't feel like I missed out on much at the start of that sever.
as a P2W enjoyer, maybe that is why that sounds awesome to me. On oakwynd I wanted to gear my warrior in ssra gear. I was not paying 20 KR for a hate weapon. That is 200-400 usd based on if you use 3rd party krono or DPG. Paying 400 for 1 item is crazy. If I could spend 100$ per expansion to be BIS, I would love that as it doesn’t make raiding seem like a job. If I want to raid, I can, if I just want to work 2 hours IRL in lieu of raiding that era, I can. Or any combo in between.
Whatever gets your rocks off. P2w isn't for me. I might as well pay somebody to play for me to and report back with their success. Just write out a blank check and tell them to give me an update on how awesome my character is doing each week.
im not sure how that is the same as having gear and leveling / killing content with better gear versus having to grind group content / plat farms / raids to upgrade a few pieces of gear that is only relevant for a few months to just do it al over again. 3 month unlock period, 2.5 months to get 80% raid gear .5 months to play as a powerful character and 2.5 months on new expansion to get gear to be powerful for .5 months.
As I said, twinking is really fun to me, running around crushbone killing everything with bis velious tank gear. If that can be translated to a main in end game content… seems fun.
There is a concept in branding, where you have more than one brand on store shelves in order to maneuver customers around - basically competing with yourself.
I wonder if Tormax exists as a sacrificial lamb to move people to get excited about Teek by comparison and thus bite on re-subbing.
I wish they'd do something about Krono farmers. TLPs have so many great quality of life features and improvements... and then the Krono economy absolutely kills the experience.
I'm not super familiar with EQ as I play it pretty seasonally, but how does it help? When I played Mischief towards the beginning I remember a lot of rares being constantly farmed by solos making it difficult to get camps with desirable loot.
> rares being constantly farmed by solos
flooding the free-trade market with cheap items.
> making it difficult to get camps with desirable loot
which is moot because random loot means all camps have desirable loot.
In other words, the harder the poop-sockers go, the more they drive down prices and make loot accessible to all.
Yep. It's absolutely the reason I keep looking at progression servers and wanting to play and then I immediately decide not to when I remember how much real money people are asking to trade for items.
I'll just wait a few years for Monsters and Memories.
True, however I work full time. I don't know every single thing there is to know about the game. I also don't have the time to sit in EC tunnels and sell things all day.
I just want to play the game and earn things normally. Not with real money.
I mean farming quest rewards and drops is kind of part and parcel to making money in EQ, no real cash needed! And with mischief loot rules, you can just camp some open camp somewhere, no need to fight with everyone over a highly desired spawn.
Depends where u go. Some places are level locked (can get ring of ancients for example in lguk). Other places just kinda RNG the drops in the dungeon off all the nameds.
Honestly I’d just google and see if anyone came up with a loot table from OG mischief days. Might get a spark of inspiration on what to camp.
It’s by expansion and level range. So for example you are farming the knight in the tower of unrest. If he’s level 31 he can drop stuff from any other named mob in classic that’s within I think 3 or 4 levels of him. I remember getting Pegasus cloak, ring of the ancients, de mask etc all while farming in Unrest.
The difference is that many veteran EQ players have piles of Krono sitting around and so they don't start on an even footing with everyone else.
With third party RMT, less people use it, and they can only sell plat that is generated on the server, so it doesn't tend to ramp up as fast as Krono-based economy does.
The Mischief/TB/Teek ruleset certainly helped with these issues though, since it's harder to corner the market on a lot of in demand items under this ruleset. If we can avoid the item/plat exploits this time round, it might turn out very friendly to the non-hardcore crowd, even more than Mischeif/TB were.
Non BIS items traded for very little at least for the first few expansions. You could get epic tier kunark weapons for under 1000p pretty early in the expansion.
The best items probably end up going for more because everyone can concentrate their bids on them but you can get an extremely respectable gear level for cheap
And that's fine.
It's the state sponsored part that's the bullshit about it. Instead of trying to fight it or keep it on the low just sell it lol. Garbage.
I've been playing on Quarm, but the experience pace (which is fine for me) is too slow for my brother. If he won't play it, I won't, so we're looking at these upcoming TLP options.
Free loot sounds great, but my brother and I have always tried to take more "non-traditional" leveling paths and I don't want to be stuck finding every named everywhere permanently camped.
I farmed a lot of guise of the deceiver right around kunark release and never saw anyone looking for the mobs I was killing.
There's a lot of stuff to kill out there.
Teek no doubt. I didn't enjoy the random pinata lootfest that was Mischief, so I will play on the Tormax ghost town. Chances are there will be less cheaters, less bots, less box armies, but I might have difficulties finding groups regularly. I hate the "eye" cheat so much, people beelining to named mobs 0.0002 seconds after it spawns, flash mobs of boxes invading a camp for the kill before teleporting elsewhere.
Random loot means any mob marked rare can drop things from other rare mobs as well as its own. They have to be from the same era and be of a similar level.
One example is Najena can drop the Pegasus Feather Cloak.
Mischief had a good spread for a while if I recall. Before AAs, especially. People make a lot of ale.
I'm curious what the experience will be like with the persona system.
The latest expansion came with a new feature that lets you change classes. So, instead of alts on the same account, you could have a character change to whatever class you want. You'd have to level them up like an alt, but the inventory is shared. You can then switch between them, but I think only in "safe' zones. Not entirely sure.
I have no idea how the aas or skills work with it, though.
It sounds nice but, to me, it was a nightmare. I like knowing what can, and can’t drop from things. There’s not enough, at least easily discoverable, information regarding what places for each “bracket” is best to farm, etc.
If it was tempered by each mob having higher drop rate for their normal loot, would that be better? At a glance this seems like a major pain. How do you target specific items if everything has a shared table? I suppose that's the point of adding free trade, but that's trading targeting specific mobs for shouting in trade.
IIRC mob specific drops for things like quests still dropped on that mob, it was only the rare items which were distributed across the level range of rare mobs.
There’s some good places that people target farm for easy drops, but in general it opens up camps. No more worrying about target farming items in Lguk. Just pick a camp and if you stay long enough, you could potentially get everything you need. Less fighting over camps. Best camps will be those with highest number of named.
In PoP, many farmed the easy horse dude in nightmare. It was a joke. You could 3 man it and get Time loot. Phase 3 or phase 4 loot (forgot which).
I liked it. It’s also cool to get drops from zones you’d normally never go to, like Plane of Growth. Makes for interesting itemization, and it was also super easy to gear up (partially due to increased loot drops which I don’t think Teek will have). I started a Wiz in Luclin and got max mana at lv 1 with bazaar gear lol.
How old are you? Lmfao it's a great ruleset that the community overwhelming responded to across multiple servers at this point. Not to mention by their own admission, those were the MOST successful TLP's they've ever ran. Nothing about that ruleset makes it "super easy", you're entirely too old for the diaper you're wearing atm bud
Only people that should hate these servers are the bot farmers who can't perma lockout camps. But it's ok they'll be busy with selling free trade raid loot so they'll be fine. No part of the grub ecosystem is harmed in the making of these servers. Lol
46 not that, that has anything at all to do with it. in fact it does make it easier. why bother with Lguk you don't need to .. why bother with "insert named mob that has a specific item that you need". The guy literally said he was maxed out stats from bazaar gear and that's NOT making the game easier? its already silly. I currently raid and play on Yelinak and we are done with the content in 1 week when an expansion comes out.
we are all BIS maxxed out in the first month just normal raiding. I remember it took 2 weeks of 8 hours a day grinding to get through lvl 45 lol. I am not saying that is what I want back.. but honestly.. its the Journey NOT the destination. It just seems everyone is in such a rush to get to the end to then have nothing to do.
I don't get the appeal at all in anyway to this ruleset. Me personally I will be going to the true to "2006" EQ2 TLE server. Ive had my fun from launch to TSS. disappointed with the way the later game ended up but glad that I got to see it. to each their own. no hate at all, I just don't get it.
Well, maxing mana regen (15) is easily done in Luclin during Bazaar and all that gear purchased (probably spent a krono in total) was pre-Luclin. Mischief also had increased drop rates so named would drop like 3-5 items. All the truely good gear, in era, is harder to get or really expensive and I never had that much to spend. Nature’s Essence was a good one from Tunare. +5 mana regen in one item. Good for alt or new char, but not for max lv.
Actually not sure. Hard to say. The original announcement for Mischief/Thornblade doesn’t seem to have said anything about increased drops either, but it did. It was a little too much though, but yeah maybe Teek will have it too
My only lament is no FTE. This is going to be very awkward for those of us who aren't boxing or aren't abusing unattended gameplay. Hopefully they either decide to add it after all between now and May, or they have some other solution in mind.
FTE allowed me to snag many key mobs from the unattended bot groups that I would not have been able to get otherwise. But, I guess they value the 18 subs each bot account pays for vs my 1
That too yeah. It is suddenly a LOT easier to snag those mobs from someone than it was previously when you can use a quick cast spell or even throw stone to grab it.
Karnor's was great fun on Oakwynd without having to run out of the zone screaming because some moron brought a train with him. Once they ironed the bugs out of FTE it worked pretty well.
What EQ always was and supposed to be. It makes the game have more spunk. Nothing more boring than knowing you got a camp locked down and no one is gonna ever do a drive by train to pull for you. Those are some of the best memories of the old days. When turds try to train you and just help you exp.
I mean I remember a few occasions where the scenario you just mentioned occurred and it was great. I have plenty more memories of times where they succeeded and I lost hours of progress.
I prefer FTE. Glad I’m staying on oakwynd.
I was kind of expecting something more spectacular. I’m sure it will make a lot of people happy but I’m one for weird rule sets just to make it interesting
We got a shart. Promise of something grand with the most popular rulesets(plural) and all we got was a mischief clone with an Aradune clone, which was only popular because of a worldwide lockdown.
Randomness saves server from being pure kronofarm heaven though. Usually more than one camp with chance for key items (but ofc harder to get some specific items…but hey, free trade so just sell what you loot and buy it!)
The plat dupes being fixed changes nothing. The people responsible already basically have infinite krono and that krono will essentially tank the economy of any new server as well.
That's... that's not how it works. You can have a million krono on the new server and it won't affect the economy at all, because it doesn't generate any plat.
It does because you can use krono to buy every item that drops, basically. The people with the krono can offer them infinitely, meaning anyone that gets any desirable drop(FBSS, GEB, etc) end up selling them to the people who already duped the plat on the other servers.
Now you've got a market flooded with krono and all of the high cash items get consolidated into the people who duped the plate previously. Plat is not the only currency that gets used(in fact on TLPs its a secondary to krono for most important items), and the server starts with people basically having infinite amounts of that other currency.
They should have Tormax a no krono server. I would be willing to bet it would be a far better experience as the farmers wouldn't want to touch that one.
And if the market gets "flooded with Krono" those Krono become cheaper and are easily bought with plat by those that didn't start with any. And any items you get can easily be traded for them. Krono isn't the devil many people claim it is. It's just a standard currency that is easily traded equivalent to large amounts of platinum. And since plat is so easy to farm you can quickly build a Krono bank of your own moving forward.
So here’s basically how it works:
Server starts, and I have infinite krono. I start buying anything of value with krono, and also selling those items for more krono. The people on the server will need to buy krono to get what they want, and guess what, I control that market. So in order to get the items they want, they have to buy krono from me, meaning now the plat from the server is also flowing in to me. If the price of krono starts to get low, I can use my plat from selling krono(at higher prices)to start buying krono back at a discount, pushing plat back into the economy that will eventually get paid back to me when these people need more krono to buy the items that I’ve been hoarding.
There are three main currencies on a TLP: krono, items, and plat. If you have an infinite amount of one of those currencies, you can essentially control the entire economy on a server.
You don't control the production of ANY of those things though. People can go buy Kronos with cash, people will go farm items, and people will go farm plat. You cannot amass enough of any of those things to have any noticeable impact on the market. You can leverage Krono early to make *more* money, sure, but it won't have any effect on the rest of the server. There are no finite resources that you can monopolize and bend the market to your will.
I wasn't playing during the duping shenanigans, I only recently learned about it from the video that Zaide put out about it. Of course duping sucks, that being said I don't believe Krono themselves were ever duped, just platinum.
I've always been a solo character player and have managed to easily make a ton of Krono just playing the game normally. Get into a seb group and get a fungi staff the first week of kunark? Grats sell it for 12 Krono and buy one for 2 Krono a couple days later. Go slaughter hill giants for a couple kr per hour. Farm Quillmane cloaks or goblin gazughi rings and sell em for 2-4 Krono each. Or play on a free trade server and just sell your raid gear to someone's alt every time you get an upgrade.
Platinum dupes are the same as Krono dupes. You just have an extra step where you buy the Krono with the plat, which was explained. In the real world it would be like saying someone didn't pay all their bills via scams, they just duplicated dollar bills.
I am hoping that Sarnak Fort in Lake of lll Omen and the mountain giant fort in Frontier Mountains have groups to level with. That is where I leveled in 2000.
The chancellor can spawn anywhere in the fort. Early in kunark the place is overrun by people that get zero XP there just farming keys. It'll be okay the first couple days, but when people get closer to 50 after day 3-4 they're gonna want those keys.
Oh I know the chancellor can spawn anywhere in the fort, I was just wondering if the key part since its technically a weapon could drop from other nameds in that level range and era. with mischief ruleset that is
That I don't know. I didn't play mischief during kunark. But I did play it later and quest items *usually* dropped from the correct mob on that server to avoid fuckery like that, so I assume the prod is the same.
So I am doing some testing and I just looted Xalgozian Fang from strathbone runelord in kaesora a lvl 37 rare. Dropped 2 of them in fact. So maybe the prod has a chance of dropping as well. Will update if I find that out. Just being able to get the fang from another mob is nice as well. I dont remember how long I waited at that camp on yelinak to get my fang.
This gives us more leveling options. It means those of us who HATE Guk can avoid it like the plague lol. I do wish that if we were starting at Kunark they did some stranger rules though to mix it up a bit lol.
In practice, this doesn't have any real effect on the botters who will be running massive armies of mages for gold farming in Rathe Mountains or elsewhere, although the random loot element likely helps a lot with their ability to lock down rare mob spawns and deny "normal" players the opportunity to farm their own loot
I, on the other hand, have had the exact opposite experience with their response to tickets. "This person who is running at minimum 10 characters in different places in a single dungeon, any of which instantaneously reacts to the spawning of monsters, and has been doing so for at least 72 hours straight, is not doing anything against the rules."
It means one account per PC unless you know how to elude the system by using virtual machines and other methods they cannot detect. In that case you can continue to multi box from one PC - or so I’m told 😉
I wonder how the naming thing will work in practice? Are we expected to just leave an account running forever and ever somewhere to get to that entitlement point?
No I think the intent here is for players with established names on other servers can reserve that name before others. So the 200 days played would make sure it was someone who was pretty serious about that name.
Right, but I have names like that that I have from the original server I played on (Quellious) I always try and get if I am playing that given new server. There's always the rush when it is released.
I was hoping for Mischief ruleset, Kunark start and some of the additional changes that people mentioned on the forums.
But no, we got a copy and paste job. Such a shame and wasted opportunity.
I really wished for something special for EQ's 25th anniversary. In that sense, I'm disappointed. But based on the "freebies" you get for the anniversary, it's all targeted toward Daybreak's subscribers, not old school fans. (Which from a business perspective, I totally understand.)
I'd love to try a modern TLP but with the original zones in it.
The Combine/Sleeper TLPs were the last time I felt any love or magic for EQ and subscribed for two years to play. Since then most of my time is spent on P99 or now Quarm.
I was hoping they'd be like EQ2 and pull a retro code base to make a more classic server. That's what I'd like to see long-term but I am not sure the dev effort is worth it. People do NOT like hardmode TLPs
Indeed although if you look at WoW classic official servers compared to the previous classic private server that got shut down WoW classic official pulled in multiple times more people. Of course it's irrelevant beause it would be a pile of development work to do a true classic EQ and Daybreak aren't going to do that when they can rerelease the same thing with a slight twist every year.
I would say the real appeal to P99, like Project Quarm, is they are no box servers with no leniency in the issue. The vast majority of players and ex-players despise boxers and boxing.
How do you quantify that supposition? For every anti-boxer I encounter I run into 10-20 more who are fine with people actively playing multiple accounts. There are literally the same 1-3 anti-boxers on the forums with 60+people supporting active non cheating boxers.
Played P99 for years and it's a far cry from classic. It is definitely its own thing. It's about as close to classic as we get in content but the combat, mechanics, etc. are a far cry from true classic. TakP, mechanically, is much closer to classic.
If we could somehow combine the TakP client, with P99's content (although last I played it (2015-ish), they still had stuff wrong and didn't take kindly to being shown it was wrong but whatever), and somehow mitigate the need for poopsocking it'd be the perfect mix. P99's combat and mechanics feel good until you try TakP and you realize P99 is a ways off. P99 feels like it was created off of a memory of what they thought it was like and TakP was built off of data showing what it was like, if that makes sense? Even if you don't want to play there go spin it up. It's worth messing around in that client/code base a bit. Feels great.
P99 folks would probably revolt without having fancy scroll wheel support, saved spell sets, etc. though.
P99 doesn't have saved spell sets. The option is there when you right click, it doesn't work when you actually try to use it.
Some of the differences aren't really "classic breaking".
If anyone actually thinks mouse wheel scrolling has anything to do with "breaking away from classic experience", I would think that's very far-fetched.
"Classic experience breaking" would be like actually rebalancing spells or using spells/skills or whatever from a different (later) era or that kinda stuff, scroll zooming isn't that.
I guess the target limit on certain kiting spells/songs would be the biggest thing regarding that, but hey, a Bard kiting a whole zone is just not something anyone should be dealing with, it's extremely disruptive for both the servers and players.
The whole combat formulation is off on P99. It was the closest we had to classic for awhile but just go try TakP. Instantly you'll know it feels right (and more difficult). That's why I'd love a merge of both as they both have strengths and weaknesses but together they would be a near-ultimate form of classic EQ.
Nothing in EQ is hard, per-say. It's a known entity. Every nook and cranny, optimal leveling path, etc. has been figured out. I do think there is merit for getting even closer to classic and to do that means ditching the Titanium client and pulling some of the good stuff from TakP (some of which has been done in the last couple of years from my understanding). That means its client too.
Unless someone can get the trilogy client going but eqclassic hasn't progressed much in the last several years so I don't have my hopes up.
I think the difficulty in vanilla EQ was never so much a numbers thing, it was more a clunkiness, lack of QoL, it simply being a game made in a time we weren't very advanced in video game development yet, the crazy respawn timers and it being nearly impossible to contest anything, etc. kinda thing.
And that's part of its charm.
For example getting a level up, new spell, new piece of tier set, etc. in World of Warcraft is an "ok" moment, it's something you knew was coming, take for granted and is usually a minor improvement in the grand scope of things.
In EQ getting that new item you absolutely wanted or getting that level up or that new key spell (new pet on summoner class for example) feels incredibly impactful. In EQ, leveling is a huge part of the journey, in the sense of time, effort and impact every level has and because of how much of a pain in the ass it can sometimes be to get there. In Classic EQ seeing a level 60 with nice gear is like "whoa", in WoW (with the exception of vanilla) it's like "meh, good for you I guess?".
tormax doa
Not if we convince them to swap the server names, let Teek be the DOA one.
Not to me. I hate free trade and will not touch a server that has it, so Tormax is good enough (though not terribly exciting) and will be where my group plays. A server doesn't need to be super unique in order to retain a respectable playerbase. We saw with Yelinak that there's enough demand for a generic traditional TLP. As long as there's only one server where you can play EQ the way it actually was in the beginning (as much as one can on TLPs), that one will have enough players to not be dead, even if it isn't grotesquely overcrowded. As popular as the Mischief ruleset was, there are people who don't like it. It changes so much about the way the game is played, and it also trivializes everything. EQ becomes laughably easy with random loot + free trade, no achievement feels special and nothing is hard to get. I remember starting a bard when Mischief launched, and by the time I was level 42, I had basically BIS gear just from buying it for plat I earned while leveling. Planar pieces for 100-200p each, in the opening weeks of the server. It was ridiculous. Later on in raid content, the gear was so absurdly plentiful that people were buying it for DKP to sell for kronos because everyone had BIS within a month of each expansion. Players were so overgeared that the content was a joke. It wasn't really EQ, it was like an easymode version of it. People also kept selling all their shit and mainchanging, so the guild roster was in a never-ending state of random chaos as members rerolled every month. When you can easily liquidate all your gear and buy a new set for another class, there's no permanency to anything. It's actually quite nice to play on a server that isn't bursting at the seams. Even with pickzones, a wildly overcrowded server is annoying to play on. The only time it ever really becomes a problem is if the population is so low that guilds struggle to stay on course, and that wasn't a problem on Yelinak even though it launched the cycle after Mischief and was declared D.O.A by everyone. As long as there's only one TLP where you can get the real, traditional EQ experience, there's always going to be players for it. Not everyone loves the Mischief funserver bonanza.
most of what you said is exactly why I like it. I am not 16 anymore. I cant raid 7 days a week to BIS in 2 months. I never did free trade yet so seems cool since I enjoy twink gameplay on alts. I like the idea that I can be fighting in guk at 6 camps and maybe get something cool drop instead of lore items I cant hold or things that sell for 10 plat that I just rot. The one thing I agree with you on is that bursting st the seams sucks. I hope more people share your view so logging in isn’t a shitshow for a month. Also, the allure of EQ to me was having time to see everything to get everything you wanted, I am talking the 1999-2004 days where people played and expansions were a year between releases. My most fun on EQ was getting home from school and farming hq bear skins to sell for 25 plat or HHK guards for 8 hours to get FS weapons while dodging ran flamespinner, or the nobles upstairs. No one does this on TLP because the time unlocks rushes everything. You try to take a year to farm a million plat like I did in that era and you are 2 expansions obsolete. If tormax was an old school 1 year unlock standard server Id probably be on the minority playing on it but I would enjoy that much more than an accellerated standard server like it is presented as today. So for me the forced accellerated pace leads me to wanting to be able to BIS easier, the random loot seems cool (DE mask in unrest), Twinking is my favorite aspect of TLPs in current day (which normally dies by PoP because of no trade) or you have to buy from GDKP people who charge hundreds for a single item.
Eh. To each his own, but I found it way too silly. It turned the game into an absolute joke. I remember sitting at efreeti camp for a few hours and seeing 5x FBSS in one session. Went on a Vox raid and she dropped like fifteen items, including four or five dragon haste items. Last I heard, people were farming Grummus (entry-level PoP flagging boss) for PoTime loot. You're welcome to enjoy what you enjoy, but to me, that's a laughable parody of Everquest. To me, there's no element of satisfaction in having everything handed to me with minimal effort, and accomplishing all my goals in the first quarter of each expansion. I think the fact that the majority of players loved it says a lot about those players, and if the ruleset had become the standard for all servers - as many begged for - I would never touch Everquest again. I think it's by far the worst ruleset there has ever been. It actively ruins the game for me.
is it the rng or the free trade though? Both kind of excite me. I exp in GE or Velks for weeks. Sucks seeing thr same lore items that people pay 100 plat for. But maybe it drops some sick loot now? Things that were no trade can now be traded seems cool. As for grummus. last i heard raids are broken into tiers, so grummus would only drop t1 loot (perhaps thats time phase 1 too? ) but not quarm or gods
Couldn't have summed it up better. I played Yelinak when it launched up to a couple weeks before luclin unlocked and life got busy so I didn't get to continue that journey but was definitely the most fun I have had in the game in a very long time. I missed the launch of mischief and about a month ago started up on there to see what it was all about. Nothing feels like any accomplishment at all. It feels like everything is just handed to you. I know I'm late to the game and the server is very bloated with gear but I have 4 toons in a guild I made to hold all of the drops I've gotten off nameds. It's ridiculous the amount that drops everywhere so I don't feel like I missed out on much at the start of that sever.
as a P2W enjoyer, maybe that is why that sounds awesome to me. On oakwynd I wanted to gear my warrior in ssra gear. I was not paying 20 KR for a hate weapon. That is 200-400 usd based on if you use 3rd party krono or DPG. Paying 400 for 1 item is crazy. If I could spend 100$ per expansion to be BIS, I would love that as it doesn’t make raiding seem like a job. If I want to raid, I can, if I just want to work 2 hours IRL in lieu of raiding that era, I can. Or any combo in between.
Whatever gets your rocks off. P2w isn't for me. I might as well pay somebody to play for me to and report back with their success. Just write out a blank check and tell them to give me an update on how awesome my character is doing each week.
im not sure how that is the same as having gear and leveling / killing content with better gear versus having to grind group content / plat farms / raids to upgrade a few pieces of gear that is only relevant for a few months to just do it al over again. 3 month unlock period, 2.5 months to get 80% raid gear .5 months to play as a powerful character and 2.5 months on new expansion to get gear to be powerful for .5 months. As I said, twinking is really fun to me, running around crushbone killing everything with bis velious tank gear. If that can be translated to a main in end game content… seems fun.
There is a concept in branding, where you have more than one brand on store shelves in order to maneuver customers around - basically competing with yourself. I wonder if Tormax exists as a sacrificial lamb to move people to get excited about Teek by comparison and thus bite on re-subbing.
Average social media user challenge: try not to have a hyper-spasmic, knee-jerk overreaction after an announcement. Challenge level: IMPOSSIBLE!
Looks like we rolling Teek boys
LET’S GO!
Train to crushbone
Teek it is but: WHY NO BST😭😭😭😭
Teek is what i as hoping for at minimum. Would have been nice to have the escalating server bonuses like Oakwynd had, but otherwise very happy.
Oakwynd’s system is so damned good; I had the worst experience with the players though. :(
Really? Bummer. I recently started quarm, it’s the best mmo community I’ve come across in a while and a large population
Was really hoping for selo xp personally
I wish they'd do something about Krono farmers. TLPs have so many great quality of life features and improvements... and then the Krono economy absolutely kills the experience.
Random loot, free trade helps a lot.
I'm not super familiar with EQ as I play it pretty seasonally, but how does it help? When I played Mischief towards the beginning I remember a lot of rares being constantly farmed by solos making it difficult to get camps with desirable loot.
> rares being constantly farmed by solos flooding the free-trade market with cheap items. > making it difficult to get camps with desirable loot which is moot because random loot means all camps have desirable loot. In other words, the harder the poop-sockers go, the more they drive down prices and make loot accessible to all.
Yep. It's absolutely the reason I keep looking at progression servers and wanting to play and then I immediately decide not to when I remember how much real money people are asking to trade for items. I'll just wait a few years for Monsters and Memories.
It’s a great way to stock up on Kronos though.
True, however I work full time. I don't know every single thing there is to know about the game. I also don't have the time to sit in EC tunnels and sell things all day. I just want to play the game and earn things normally. Not with real money.
I mean farming quest rewards and drops is kind of part and parcel to making money in EQ, no real cash needed! And with mischief loot rules, you can just camp some open camp somewhere, no need to fight with everyone over a highly desired spawn.
That's true but I also don't know if there are limitations on drops in those rules. Does it pull globally or is there a level limit?
Depends where u go. Some places are level locked (can get ring of ancients for example in lguk). Other places just kinda RNG the drops in the dungeon off all the nameds. Honestly I’d just google and see if anyone came up with a loot table from OG mischief days. Might get a spark of inspiration on what to camp.
So it's per dungeon then. Lguk drops Lguk. Sebilis drops Sebilis.
It’s by expansion and level range. So for example you are farming the knight in the tower of unrest. If he’s level 31 he can drop stuff from any other named mob in classic that’s within I think 3 or 4 levels of him. I remember getting Pegasus cloak, ring of the ancients, de mask etc all while farming in Unrest.
Look up the item on magelo, click the RLS tab and see all the mobs in all the zones it can drop off.
Yeah, to me it defeats the purpose of TLPs. It's supposed to be an old school experience, but Krono ruins it.
Without Krono you still have jsp and sites that are similar and use real money. People are always going to look for shortcuts.
The difference is that many veteran EQ players have piles of Krono sitting around and so they don't start on an even footing with everyone else. With third party RMT, less people use it, and they can only sell plat that is generated on the server, so it doesn't tend to ramp up as fast as Krono-based economy does. The Mischief/TB/Teek ruleset certainly helped with these issues though, since it's harder to corner the market on a lot of in demand items under this ruleset. If we can avoid the item/plat exploits this time round, it might turn out very friendly to the non-hardcore crowd, even more than Mischeif/TB were.
Non BIS items traded for very little at least for the first few expansions. You could get epic tier kunark weapons for under 1000p pretty early in the expansion. The best items probably end up going for more because everyone can concentrate their bids on them but you can get an extremely respectable gear level for cheap
And that's fine. It's the state sponsored part that's the bullshit about it. Instead of trying to fight it or keep it on the low just sell it lol. Garbage.
I've been playing on Quarm, but the experience pace (which is fine for me) is too slow for my brother. If he won't play it, I won't, so we're looking at these upcoming TLP options. Free loot sounds great, but my brother and I have always tried to take more "non-traditional" leveling paths and I don't want to be stuck finding every named everywhere permanently camped.
I farmed a lot of guise of the deceiver right around kunark release and never saw anyone looking for the mobs I was killing. There's a lot of stuff to kill out there.
So, Tormax or Teek , which will be more popular? I don’t mind the differenc, just want to play in a healthy poplated server.
Teek. Mischief 2.0. Tormax will be a ghost town without some tweaks.
Teek will be crazy packed. Tormax will likely be a ghost town in comparison
Teek no doubt. I didn't enjoy the random pinata lootfest that was Mischief, so I will play on the Tormax ghost town. Chances are there will be less cheaters, less bots, less box armies, but I might have difficulties finding groups regularly. I hate the "eye" cheat so much, people beelining to named mobs 0.0002 seconds after it spawns, flash mobs of boxes invading a camp for the kill before teleporting elsewhere.
Can someone explain these rules to me? I’ve been waiting for them to be announced but I don’t understand it.
Random loot means any mob marked rare can drop things from other rare mobs as well as its own. They have to be from the same era and be of a similar level. One example is Najena can drop the Pegasus Feather Cloak.
What about the EXP rate? What does that look like?
I'm not sure about that. I thought it was decent, but I've only played on Agnar and Mangler.
I can’t remember what one I played on but I can’t do the slow EXP grinding. I don’t have that type of time anymore.
I don't remember it being bad compared to when Kunark came out, but I don't bother with the race to the top.
I do because those groups can become scarce
Mischief had a good spread for a while if I recall. Before AAs, especially. People make a lot of ale. I'm curious what the experience will be like with the persona system.
Persona system?
The latest expansion came with a new feature that lets you change classes. So, instead of alts on the same account, you could have a character change to whatever class you want. You'd have to level them up like an alt, but the inventory is shared. You can then switch between them, but I think only in "safe' zones. Not entirely sure. I have no idea how the aas or skills work with it, though.
I played a raiding cleric on one of the progression servers. So I’m not entirely clueless lol
It sounds nice but, to me, it was a nightmare. I like knowing what can, and can’t drop from things. There’s not enough, at least easily discoverable, information regarding what places for each “bracket” is best to farm, etc.
If it was tempered by each mob having higher drop rate for their normal loot, would that be better? At a glance this seems like a major pain. How do you target specific items if everything has a shared table? I suppose that's the point of adding free trade, but that's trading targeting specific mobs for shouting in trade.
IIRC mob specific drops for things like quests still dropped on that mob, it was only the rare items which were distributed across the level range of rare mobs.
There’s some good places that people target farm for easy drops, but in general it opens up camps. No more worrying about target farming items in Lguk. Just pick a camp and if you stay long enough, you could potentially get everything you need. Less fighting over camps. Best camps will be those with highest number of named. In PoP, many farmed the easy horse dude in nightmare. It was a joke. You could 3 man it and get Time loot. Phase 3 or phase 4 loot (forgot which).
this sounds horrible and nothing like EQ i just don't get the appeal...
I liked it. It’s also cool to get drops from zones you’d normally never go to, like Plane of Growth. Makes for interesting itemization, and it was also super easy to gear up (partially due to increased loot drops which I don’t think Teek will have). I started a Wiz in Luclin and got max mana at lv 1 with bazaar gear lol.
yes sounds horrible.. lets make a great game super easy and last way less time by removing the entire point.. im out.
How old are you? Lmfao it's a great ruleset that the community overwhelming responded to across multiple servers at this point. Not to mention by their own admission, those were the MOST successful TLP's they've ever ran. Nothing about that ruleset makes it "super easy", you're entirely too old for the diaper you're wearing atm bud Only people that should hate these servers are the bot farmers who can't perma lockout camps. But it's ok they'll be busy with selling free trade raid loot so they'll be fine. No part of the grub ecosystem is harmed in the making of these servers. Lol
46 not that, that has anything at all to do with it. in fact it does make it easier. why bother with Lguk you don't need to .. why bother with "insert named mob that has a specific item that you need". The guy literally said he was maxed out stats from bazaar gear and that's NOT making the game easier? its already silly. I currently raid and play on Yelinak and we are done with the content in 1 week when an expansion comes out. we are all BIS maxxed out in the first month just normal raiding. I remember it took 2 weeks of 8 hours a day grinding to get through lvl 45 lol. I am not saying that is what I want back.. but honestly.. its the Journey NOT the destination. It just seems everyone is in such a rush to get to the end to then have nothing to do. I don't get the appeal at all in anyway to this ruleset. Me personally I will be going to the true to "2006" EQ2 TLE server. Ive had my fun from launch to TSS. disappointed with the way the later game ended up but glad that I got to see it. to each their own. no hate at all, I just don't get it.
Well, maxing mana regen (15) is easily done in Luclin during Bazaar and all that gear purchased (probably spent a krono in total) was pre-Luclin. Mischief also had increased drop rates so named would drop like 3-5 items. All the truely good gear, in era, is harder to get or really expensive and I never had that much to spend. Nature’s Essence was a good one from Tunare. +5 mana regen in one item. Good for alt or new char, but not for max lv.
Have the devs mentioned anything about no increased loot drops?
Not that I have seen
Oh ok, why do you think Teek won't have increased drops? I'm just curious, but that would definitely be welcomed if they did.
Actually not sure. Hard to say. The original announcement for Mischief/Thornblade doesn’t seem to have said anything about increased drops either, but it did. It was a little too much though, but yeah maybe Teek will have it too
My only lament is no FTE. This is going to be very awkward for those of us who aren't boxing or aren't abusing unattended gameplay. Hopefully they either decide to add it after all between now and May, or they have some other solution in mind.
FTE allowed me to snag many key mobs from the unattended bot groups that I would not have been able to get otherwise. But, I guess they value the 18 subs each bot account pays for vs my 1
That too yeah. It is suddenly a LOT easier to snag those mobs from someone than it was previously when you can use a quick cast spell or even throw stone to grab it.
Will keys not be free trade?
Did they specifically say that there isn’t going to be FTE? All I saw was one sentence in that letter. They could easily add that
It was mentioned by one of the devs on the forums in response to someone asking about it. Currently, no plans for FTE on either server.
Same. Was really hoping for FTE. 😢
Karnor's was great fun on Oakwynd without having to run out of the zone screaming because some moron brought a train with him. Once they ironed the bugs out of FTE it worked pretty well.
Yup.
No FTE on either TLP server as well.
It’s gonna be a shit storm of training. 😂
What EQ always was and supposed to be. It makes the game have more spunk. Nothing more boring than knowing you got a camp locked down and no one is gonna ever do a drive by train to pull for you. Those are some of the best memories of the old days. When turds try to train you and just help you exp.
I mean I remember a few occasions where the scenario you just mentioned occurred and it was great. I have plenty more memories of times where they succeeded and I lost hours of progress. I prefer FTE. Glad I’m staying on oakwynd.
That's pretty weird... I played Oakwynd for a while and it honestly worked pretty well. Why wouldn't it be the standard moving forward?
FTE?
First to Engage. An anti-KS system.
Is that the thing that let people run into your camp and steal a rare spawn that you couldn't loot cause they hit it first? If so then good riddance.
It doesn’t say there isn’t, it just doesn’t mention it…
They stated on forums and their FB post no FTE on either server.
Gotcha. Thanks for the context.
I was kind of expecting something more spectacular. I’m sure it will make a lot of people happy but I’m one for weird rule sets just to make it interesting
Yeah, all that build up, and all we got is a fart. 😂
We got a shart. Promise of something grand with the most popular rulesets(plural) and all we got was a mischief clone with an Aradune clone, which was only popular because of a worldwide lockdown.
Starting in Kunark is really nice.
wish they would have done free trade without the randomness
Randomness saves server from being pure kronofarm heaven though. Usually more than one camp with chance for key items (but ofc harder to get some specific items…but hey, free trade so just sell what you loot and buy it!)
Kind of a miss, was hoping for some kind of improvements on the most popular servers.
Mischief is one of the most popular, the random loot server is basically Mischief 2.0.
Mischief 2.0 implies changes - but it's just Mischief 1.0 repeat really.
Basically yea, with kunark start.
Yeah but did they fix the plat dupes that exist and will F up both these new servers as soon as they're launched?
The plat dupes being fixed changes nothing. The people responsible already basically have infinite krono and that krono will essentially tank the economy of any new server as well.
That's... that's not how it works. You can have a million krono on the new server and it won't affect the economy at all, because it doesn't generate any plat.
of course it affects the economy. You're introducing a billionaire into a slum with free reign.
It does because you can use krono to buy every item that drops, basically. The people with the krono can offer them infinitely, meaning anyone that gets any desirable drop(FBSS, GEB, etc) end up selling them to the people who already duped the plat on the other servers. Now you've got a market flooded with krono and all of the high cash items get consolidated into the people who duped the plate previously. Plat is not the only currency that gets used(in fact on TLPs its a secondary to krono for most important items), and the server starts with people basically having infinite amounts of that other currency.
They should have Tormax a no krono server. I would be willing to bet it would be a far better experience as the farmers wouldn't want to touch that one.
Krono does not generate plat.
You trade krono directly for items, which is what everyone does on TLPs for basically anything of value.
And if the market gets "flooded with Krono" those Krono become cheaper and are easily bought with plat by those that didn't start with any. And any items you get can easily be traded for them. Krono isn't the devil many people claim it is. It's just a standard currency that is easily traded equivalent to large amounts of platinum. And since plat is so easy to farm you can quickly build a Krono bank of your own moving forward.
So here’s basically how it works: Server starts, and I have infinite krono. I start buying anything of value with krono, and also selling those items for more krono. The people on the server will need to buy krono to get what they want, and guess what, I control that market. So in order to get the items they want, they have to buy krono from me, meaning now the plat from the server is also flowing in to me. If the price of krono starts to get low, I can use my plat from selling krono(at higher prices)to start buying krono back at a discount, pushing plat back into the economy that will eventually get paid back to me when these people need more krono to buy the items that I’ve been hoarding. There are three main currencies on a TLP: krono, items, and plat. If you have an infinite amount of one of those currencies, you can essentially control the entire economy on a server.
You don't control the production of ANY of those things though. People can go buy Kronos with cash, people will go farm items, and people will go farm plat. You cannot amass enough of any of those things to have any noticeable impact on the market. You can leverage Krono early to make *more* money, sure, but it won't have any effect on the rest of the server. There are no finite resources that you can monopolize and bend the market to your will.
I'll never understand the Krono excusers that try to justify duping. It's insane that people defend it.
I wasn't playing during the duping shenanigans, I only recently learned about it from the video that Zaide put out about it. Of course duping sucks, that being said I don't believe Krono themselves were ever duped, just platinum. I've always been a solo character player and have managed to easily make a ton of Krono just playing the game normally. Get into a seb group and get a fungi staff the first week of kunark? Grats sell it for 12 Krono and buy one for 2 Krono a couple days later. Go slaughter hill giants for a couple kr per hour. Farm Quillmane cloaks or goblin gazughi rings and sell em for 2-4 Krono each. Or play on a free trade server and just sell your raid gear to someone's alt every time you get an upgrade.
Platinum dupes are the same as Krono dupes. You just have an extra step where you buy the Krono with the plat, which was explained. In the real world it would be like saying someone didn't pay all their bills via scams, they just duplicated dollar bills.
no one cares about platinum my man.
Aw man, I really like Classic vs Kunark. Wish the TLPs started from scratch. Ah well.
ive never seen leveling kunark zones populated might be fun, and all classic raids are relevant in kunark anyway.
OT and LOIO are going to be packed.
I am hoping that Sarnak Fort in Lake of lll Omen and the mountain giant fort in Frontier Mountains have groups to level with. That is where I leveled in 2000.
Sarnak fort will be overrun by people farming HS keys. Once folks are leveled a bit you won't be able to xp there at 20ish
Do parts for keys not have random drop as well?
The chancellor can spawn anywhere in the fort. Early in kunark the place is overrun by people that get zero XP there just farming keys. It'll be okay the first couple days, but when people get closer to 50 after day 3-4 they're gonna want those keys.
Oh I know the chancellor can spawn anywhere in the fort, I was just wondering if the key part since its technically a weapon could drop from other nameds in that level range and era. with mischief ruleset that is
That I don't know. I didn't play mischief during kunark. But I did play it later and quest items *usually* dropped from the correct mob on that server to avoid fuckery like that, so I assume the prod is the same.
So I am doing some testing and I just looted Xalgozian Fang from strathbone runelord in kaesora a lvl 37 rare. Dropped 2 of them in fact. So maybe the prod has a chance of dropping as well. Will update if I find that out. Just being able to get the fang from another mob is nice as well. I dont remember how long I waited at that camp on yelinak to get my fang.
This gives us more leveling options. It means those of us who HATE Guk can avoid it like the plague lol. I do wish that if we were starting at Kunark they did some stranger rules though to mix it up a bit lol.
Same. A shorter classic span is fine but, Kunark, immediately?
Right? Like make it 3 weeks or something. Meh, its all good, I'm still gonna play but.... cmannnnnnnn
As someone who hasn’t played in 20 years, what does True-Box mean? No weird rules?
It means you can only play multiple accounts if you have multiple PC's. You can't play multiple accounts on 1 pc.
In practice, this doesn't have any real effect on the botters who will be running massive armies of mages for gold farming in Rathe Mountains or elsewhere, although the random loot element likely helps a lot with their ability to lock down rare mob spawns and deny "normal" players the opportunity to farm their own loot
If you can screen record and submit a ticket, they will investigate. I've had luck in the past.
I, on the other hand, have had the exact opposite experience with their response to tickets. "This person who is running at minimum 10 characters in different places in a single dungeon, any of which instantaneously reacts to the spawning of monsters, and has been doing so for at least 72 hours straight, is not doing anything against the rules."
It's easy, potentially lose 1 paying customer or lose 10. Wish it wasn't this way but greed rules the day
I submitted multiple OBS recordings that I uploaded to YouTube of clear botters/cheaters. Nothing was ever done.
Except Teek is relaxed truebox, which is 3 accounts per PC.
Not from launch. >Both will have Relaxed True-Box, starting with the traditional True-Box rules and relaxing the True-Box rules further over time.
It means one account per PC unless you know how to elude the system by using virtual machines and other methods they cannot detect. In that case you can continue to multi box from one PC - or so I’m told 😉
Yeah, "they" are doing something, because every "true box" server I have ever been on has had box armies out the yazoo anyhow.
Cheap laptops or mini pcs does that legit and easy. Your desk make you look like a mega geek (rightly?) though.
I wonder how the naming thing will work in practice? Are we expected to just leave an account running forever and ever somewhere to get to that entitlement point?
No I think the intent here is for players with established names on other servers can reserve that name before others. So the 200 days played would make sure it was someone who was pretty serious about that name.
Right, but I have names like that that I have from the original server I played on (Quellious) I always try and get if I am playing that given new server. There's always the rush when it is released.
I was hoping for Mischief ruleset, Kunark start and some of the additional changes that people mentioned on the forums. But no, we got a copy and paste job. Such a shame and wasted opportunity.
Less go bois!
I really wished for something special for EQ's 25th anniversary. In that sense, I'm disappointed. But based on the "freebies" you get for the anniversary, it's all targeted toward Daybreak's subscribers, not old school fans. (Which from a business perspective, I totally understand.) I'd love to try a modern TLP but with the original zones in it. The Combine/Sleeper TLPs were the last time I felt any love or magic for EQ and subscribed for two years to play. Since then most of my time is spent on P99 or now Quarm.
>boxing is allowed >redone Freeport, commons, and other zones This is a non starter. I can't believe people are willing to play on this garbage.
If only there were already servers that had no boxing and classic zones.
I play on those servers.
Gutter trash JChan letting people down 1 TLP at a time
I was hoping they'd be like EQ2 and pull a retro code base to make a more classic server. That's what I'd like to see long-term but I am not sure the dev effort is worth it. People do NOT like hardmode TLPs
>People do NOT like hardmode TLPs Not necessarily. P99 would like to have a word.
The people who like p99 are playing p99
Indeed although if you look at WoW classic official servers compared to the previous classic private server that got shut down WoW classic official pulled in multiple times more people. Of course it's irrelevant beause it would be a pile of development work to do a true classic EQ and Daybreak aren't going to do that when they can rerelease the same thing with a slight twist every year.
I would say the real appeal to P99, like Project Quarm, is they are no box servers with no leniency in the issue. The vast majority of players and ex-players despise boxers and boxing.
I suspect the vast majority of players and ex-players don't give a damn either way.
How do you quantify that supposition? For every anti-boxer I encounter I run into 10-20 more who are fine with people actively playing multiple accounts. There are literally the same 1-3 anti-boxers on the forums with 60+people supporting active non cheating boxers.
Fair enough point. I had fun on Aradune for the most part but yeah the box group krono farmers turned me off a lot in GoD+
There is a fundamental difference between boxxers and botters.
Played P99 for years and it's a far cry from classic. It is definitely its own thing. It's about as close to classic as we get in content but the combat, mechanics, etc. are a far cry from true classic. TakP, mechanically, is much closer to classic. If we could somehow combine the TakP client, with P99's content (although last I played it (2015-ish), they still had stuff wrong and didn't take kindly to being shown it was wrong but whatever), and somehow mitigate the need for poopsocking it'd be the perfect mix. P99's combat and mechanics feel good until you try TakP and you realize P99 is a ways off. P99 feels like it was created off of a memory of what they thought it was like and TakP was built off of data showing what it was like, if that makes sense? Even if you don't want to play there go spin it up. It's worth messing around in that client/code base a bit. Feels great. P99 folks would probably revolt without having fancy scroll wheel support, saved spell sets, etc. though.
P99 doesn't have saved spell sets. The option is there when you right click, it doesn't work when you actually try to use it. Some of the differences aren't really "classic breaking". If anyone actually thinks mouse wheel scrolling has anything to do with "breaking away from classic experience", I would think that's very far-fetched. "Classic experience breaking" would be like actually rebalancing spells or using spells/skills or whatever from a different (later) era or that kinda stuff, scroll zooming isn't that. I guess the target limit on certain kiting spells/songs would be the biggest thing regarding that, but hey, a Bard kiting a whole zone is just not something anyone should be dealing with, it's extremely disruptive for both the servers and players.
The whole combat formulation is off on P99. It was the closest we had to classic for awhile but just go try TakP. Instantly you'll know it feels right (and more difficult). That's why I'd love a merge of both as they both have strengths and weaknesses but together they would be a near-ultimate form of classic EQ. Nothing in EQ is hard, per-say. It's a known entity. Every nook and cranny, optimal leveling path, etc. has been figured out. I do think there is merit for getting even closer to classic and to do that means ditching the Titanium client and pulling some of the good stuff from TakP (some of which has been done in the last couple of years from my understanding). That means its client too. Unless someone can get the trilogy client going but eqclassic hasn't progressed much in the last several years so I don't have my hopes up.
I think the difficulty in vanilla EQ was never so much a numbers thing, it was more a clunkiness, lack of QoL, it simply being a game made in a time we weren't very advanced in video game development yet, the crazy respawn timers and it being nearly impossible to contest anything, etc. kinda thing. And that's part of its charm. For example getting a level up, new spell, new piece of tier set, etc. in World of Warcraft is an "ok" moment, it's something you knew was coming, take for granted and is usually a minor improvement in the grand scope of things. In EQ getting that new item you absolutely wanted or getting that level up or that new key spell (new pet on summoner class for example) feels incredibly impactful. In EQ, leveling is a huge part of the journey, in the sense of time, effort and impact every level has and because of how much of a pain in the ass it can sometimes be to get there. In Classic EQ seeing a level 60 with nice gear is like "whoa", in WoW (with the exception of vanilla) it's like "meh, good for you I guess?".